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Rose Bakery and Comme des Garçons Debut Another Dover Street Market

by Patricia Reilly

on 12/21/13 at 04:00 PM

It's opening day at Rose Bakery in New York: Co-owners Rose and Jean-Charles Carrarini recommend the assiette de légumes.

Today, with the opening of Comme des Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo's Dover Street Market, a nondescript corner of Manhattan should see its proverbial Klout score spike: The Kips Bay neighborhood gains not only a prime spot on the fashion map, but also a branch of Rose Bakery, a British-style bakery/restaurant with an international following. Dozens of innovative designer labels fill seven striking floors of the 1909 landmark, yet the first temptation snagging shoppers may well be the bakery itself, situated just inside the entrance, on 30th Street near Lexington Avenue.

The menu changes every day, baker Rose Carrarini and her husband and business partner, Jean-Charles, explained yesterday when I met them to preview the lofty space. "We're going to do our basics," Rose noted, referring to the light fare (including a famously not-so-sweet carrot cake, quiches, scones, and the "signature" salad plate, the assiette de légumes) that's earned the eatery cult status at four Paris locations as well as Dover Street Markets in London and Tokyo.

There's a family connection (Kawakubo is married to Rose's brother, who is also Comme's CEO), and there's fashion in both couples' DNA (the Carrarinis first met while working at Liberty in London but eventually "went sideways," as Jean-Charles puts it, to pursue food, their "first love of all"). At a glance, the synergy between Rose Bakery and Dover Street Market seems as much about philosophy as clan. Asked how a cuisine Jean-Charles calls "simple, simple, simple" jibes with the high concept of Kawakubo's fashion emporium, "I have no idea why--it kind of jells very well, doesn't it?" Rose mused. "I think Rei must have a respect for what we're doing, and she likes the simplicity of it, and the kind of messiness of it…. In Paris, we have vegetables lying about. So it's kind of like not very smart," in the British sense of, say, fashionably dressed. "It's very relaxed, it's very easy--and very light. Light cooking--there's room for that, you know?"